Warden: You can’t fix ‘a bad release’

An inmate holds his arms behind his back while speaking with a judge via teleconference during first appearances at the County Jail in Panama City on Thursday.

Andrew P Johnson / The News Herald

By Chris Olwell / The News Herald

Published: Monday, October 28, 2013 at 09:22 AM.

LYNN HAVEN — The exit of the Bay County Jail is like the exit of a submarine or a spaceship; the door behind an inmate has to close before the door in front of them, the one that will lead them into the sunlight and the arms of their family, will open.

Joseph Martin had been in the Bay County Jail since Sept. 10 before he made bond Thursday and passed through both doors, where his young sister jumped into his arms. He’s got two young children of his own, both with medical concerns, so you can bet he has plans after he was released.

“Yeah,” Martin said. “My kids.”

Martin is one of the roughly 35 people who will be released from the jail today, Warden Rick Anglin said. Jail staff jump through more hoops than you might think to make sure they don’t release someone who isn’t supposed to be released.

“I tell them all the time,” Anglin said of his staff members, “if there’s one thing in a correctional facility you can’t fix it’s a bad release.”

Department of Corrections officials have been dealing now for several weeks with a pair of bad releases. The release of two convicted killers based on forged court records sparked a massive effort to recapture the inmates and an investigation into how they managed to escape and who helped them.

A county jail isn’t the same as a state prison, Anglin was quick to point out. The county is going to release more people, but fewer of the people they do release will be violent criminals. Jail and court officials are confident they’ve got a system in place to prevent them from releasing the wrong person, but anything can happen.

LYNN HAVEN — The exit of the Bay County Jail is like the exit of a submarine or a spaceship; the door behind an inmate has to close before the door in front of them, the one that will lead them into the sunlight and the arms of their family, will open.

Joseph Martin had been in the Bay County Jail since Sept. 10 before he made bond Thursday and passed through both doors, where his young sister jumped into his arms. He’s got two young children of his own, both with medical concerns, so you can bet he has plans after he was released.

“Yeah,” Martin said. “My kids.”

Martin is one of the roughly 35 people who will be released from the jail today, Warden Rick Anglin said. Jail staff jump through more hoops than you might think to make sure they don’t release someone who isn’t supposed to be released.

“I tell them all the time,” Anglin said of his staff members, “if there’s one thing in a correctional facility you can’t fix it’s a bad release.”

Department of Corrections officials have been dealing now for several weeks with a pair of bad releases. The release of two convicted killers based on forged court records sparked a massive effort to recapture the inmates and an investigation into how they managed to escape and who helped them.

A county jail isn’t the same as a state prison, Anglin was quick to point out. The county is going to release more people, but fewer of the people they do release will be violent criminals. Jail and court officials are confident they’ve got a system in place to prevent them from releasing the wrong person, but anything can happen.

“Here’s one thing you’ve got to learn in this business: You’ve got to always think that next guy is going to try to get out of jail,” said Lt. Brian Adkison, who works in the jail’s releasing department.

To get out of the jail, you’d have to pose as someone who’s being released, so you’d need their name, date of birth, address and Social Security number to start with. You’d need to know how long that person has been incarcerated and on what charges. Plus you’d have to look just like the inmate whose identity you’re assuming.

Already it sounds impossible, but people have tried. A pair of cousins with the same first and last name and a pair of identical twin sisters have tried to pull shenanigans. But even twins can’t beat the technology Martin used before his property was returned to him: a two-digit reader.

Martin put his index and middle fingers on a scanner. The data flew to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and returned moments later. A hit indicated he was in fact the same Joseph Martin whose photo was on the computer screen, who’s charged with theft and violating probation.

“That’s how we know we’re releasing the right inmate,” Anglin said.

That’s an understatement.

There’s a lot of redundancy built into the process of releasing an inmate on any of the numerous ways to leave the jail. (Adkison said he figured once about 30 ways to get out.) If, like Martin, an inmate posts bond or is released on their own recognizance, no fewer than four people will go over their file.

Before an inmate ever gets to the releasing department, two records clerks will each look in the file and begin matching details, things like case numbers, charges, names, addresses, Social Security numbers — pretty much anything that can be checked against another source will be. If it’s a bond, they verify the bondsman and the expiration date on the bond, and then they check to make sure the inmate has a bond for each charge.

Assuming all those details check out, jail staff will check to see if other jurisdictions have a hold on the inmate, said administrative chief David Slusser.

“That’s another step in the process is making sure they’re not wanted anywhere else,” Slusser said.

The paper trail begins at an inmate’s first court appearance, when a judge reviews the charges and makes a bond decision. There’s a clerk at the jail and the courthouse, each keeping an independent record of each inmate’s outcome. Any discrepancy that can’t be resolved through the instant messaging system on each clerk’s computer will result in phone calls to the judge’s assistant.

Paperwork from the courthouse will be hand delivered to the jail. Records go to the records room, which is accessible only by records staff and supervisors. An inmate on a cleaning crew might get in there, but only under direct supervision. Any manipulation of these files would be a disaster.

Keeping an inmate whose release has been authorized is no good either, so once they post bond jail staff has to get them out or have a good explanation for keeping them, but they err on the side of caution.

“We’ve had times where they call the judge at home because we’re not going to release somebody unless we’re sure,” Slusser said.
All of this has to happen rapidly, Adkison pointed out. Once an inmate posts bond they’ve got to be out that day.

NOTE: Clicking on hashtags in this stream may result in seeing adult material, such as photos or foul language, that appear elsewhere on Twitter. We do not endorse such material, but we do not have control over what items can be found in hashtag searches.